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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23403535">Butterflies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuliaJekyll/pseuds/JuliaJekyll'>JuliaJekyll</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Good Omens One Shots [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with a Happy Ending, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Desire, Drinking to Cope, Kissing, Language, Light Angst, Love, Love Bites, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Neck Kissing, Pining, Post-Scene: Church in London 1941 (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:41:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,563</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23403535</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuliaJekyll/pseuds/JuliaJekyll</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley drinks and pines after saving Aziraphale in 1941.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Good Omens One Shots [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1544350</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>119</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Butterflies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Love wasn’t nice. Crowley couldn’t understand why people wrote so many poems and plays and sonnets about it, like it was a pleasant dream or an enjoyable respite from the mundane minutiae of life. They all talked about how lovely it was, how it gave meaning to existence, how it infused you with purpose and made everything flutter and flip inside you as though your insides were filled with drunk butterflies. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You’d have to be a drunk butterfly yourself to believe that kind of thing, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Crowley thought, as he threw back another glass of wine - white, not even the red that he preferred - not drinking it, but pitching it down his throat as though his neck were some sort of rubbish receptacle. All the better to get drunk quickly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was what he wanted, tonight: to be drunk, to pass out, to forget. To drown any butterflies that might have taken up residence in his stomach when Aziraphale had sat across from him in his Bentley for the first time, thanking him for saving his books from an explosion and looking for all the world like he wanted to kiss him. </span>
  <span>Crowley shook his head, and the movement felt curiously slow, as if the alcohol had already made its way into his brain and begun to make him sluggish. Good; it wasn’t like he’d need it again tonight. He wasn’t going to be performing any more miracles now; he’d done his virtuous deed for the decade, saving one particularly naive angel from a trio of unscrupulous Nazis, and a fat lot of good it had done him too. That was why he was here, sprawled in a chair that seemed to be getting progressively less comfortable with every passing minute, drowning his butterflies in booze. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ah, booze. Perhaps still Crowley’s favourite invention, even after all these centuries of watching the humans invent ever more incredible things. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He could’ve invited me in,” he mused out loud, not really sure who he was talking to - the stubborn butterflies inside him who refused to drown, perhaps? “He could’ve let me come in; it’s not like he had any customers inside that bookshop of his, but nooo, that wouldn’t be </span>
  <em>
    <span>proper</span>
  </em>
  <span>; like he’s a virginal housemaid in the service of the Pope, or something!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That made no sense and he knew it - the Pope’s housemaids had never been expected to be virginal, as far as he was aware - but he’d saved an angel from discorporation tonight; surely he’d earned the right to talk a bit of nonsense. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was also on his fifth glass of wine and drunk off his head, but that was neither here nor there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He filled up his cup again, dimly registering but not really caring about the few drops that splashed out onto the floor. He could always miracle them away later - straight into his bloodstream, likely as not. He took a massive, draining sip, ran his free hand through his shorn hair, ripped off the sunglasses that he was still wearing for some reason and threw them onto the floor. He needn’t have bothered with them in the first place, he realised now; even if those Nazis had seen his eyes, they were all dead now, so it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. He took no pleasure in killing humans, unlike certain other demons he could mention, but he’’d gone into the situation more than prepared to see them dead, if that was what had to happen in order for him to help his angel. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No one could say he hadn’t tried to warn them, though. No one could accuse Anthony J. Crowley of being an unfair opponent, demonic powers or no. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which brought him back to the issue of why everyone seemed to think that love was nice and pleasant, when it was really just one stabbing pain after another. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crowley drained the glass. Drinking himself stupid over a crush; that would be one to tell the Lords of Hell. They’d laugh him into the Second Circle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ungrateful bastard,” he murmured aloud, staring up at the ceiling as he miracled his glass full again, finally too drunk to pour it manually. “Have you ever been grateful for anything I did for you, huh? Have you even </span>
  <em>
    <span>noticed </span>
  </em>
  <span>that I all but fall over myself to help you anytime you need me? Does it even register in that clever brain of yours? Has it even occurred to your genius self that I love you like a...fuck, I don’t know; I’ve never been good with metaphors. ‘M not like those poets. Like a...butterfly loves booze?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, that wasn’t right; butterflies didn’t actually drink, he was pretty sure. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Like a...butterfly loves flowers. Or that...that yellow shit that’s in flowers, what’s it called? Bollocks, I’m wasted.” His hand groped for the bottle of wine as he forgot that he’d given up on pouring it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crowley rolled over, his wine sloshing about in his goblet as he turned to face the window, though none of it spilled. He stared blankly out at the night sky, all he could see from the penthouse floor, and tried to imagine Aziraphale somewhere in the same city, not so terribly far away from where he was now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do love you, angel; I do. And you won’t even let me tell you. Even if I had the spine to say it, you wouldn’t give me the chance.” His hand shook as he put his glass down on the floor and closed his eyes. “We came so close...I know we did…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They had, and he would not be dissuaded from believing it. He’d seen something in those blue eyes, when he’d dropped Aziraphale off at that absurd bookshop from which no one ever bought anything. He’d seen a stroke of passion, of desire, quickly taken over by a shutter of fear that had closed his angel off to him and made him hurry out of the car, clutching his bag of precious books in a way he’d likely never clutch at Crowley. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crowley’s fingers flexed on an invisible pale wrist, and he licked his lips, stale wine making his breath bitter. He winced. “Love you, angel,” he murmured. “Love you to Armaggeddon and back. Butterflies be damned.” </span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>“Tell me again,” Crowley whispered into Aziraphale’s neck, clasping his hands together to still them, struggling to stop his body from shaking with need. Not sexual need; not this time. Emotional need. A long-suppressed internal craving. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aziraphale’s mouth stroked over his jaw as he brought his lips back to Crowley’s ear. “I wanted to,” he whispered, his voice so steady and sure that Crowley had no room to doubt him, even if he hadn’t already heard this so many times he nearly had it memorised. “I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything. Why do you think I did that horrid, undignified scramble out of the car and into the bookshop?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crowley laughed in spite of himself. “I admit, you didn’t move with your usual gravitas,” he said softly, as he kissed Aziraphale’s collarbone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aziraphale rolled off him and lay down beside him, his skin warm against Crowley’s side. “That might be because I was hard as a rock.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crowley’s eyes widened; he hadn’t heard this before. “Really?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Aziraphale admitted, “but I probably would’ve been if I’d bothered to make the effort. Of course, I carefully avoided doing so for the next several weeks at least.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh? Why?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because I knew that if I did, all I’d be able to think about would be you.” Aziraphale’s fingers skated over Crowley’s chest, briefly brushing over the sparse red hair there, swiping sweat from the grooves between his ribs. “I wanted you that night; it took every bit of angelic virtue I had left to stop me from ordering you into my bed.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ordering me, hm?” Crowley flipped Aziraphale onto his back and straddled him, then leaned down to kiss him fiercely. “What makes you think I’d have listened to your orders?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Please, darling. Don’t try to tell me you wouldn’t have done whatever I asked that night. What would a tumble into bed have been, after you crossed consecrated ground to save me from Nazis?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crowley grew serious. “Everything, angel,” he said quietly. “It would have been everything to me.” </span>
  <span>Aziraphale’s eyes softened at that. “Oh, my dear,” he said quietly, reaching up to touch Crowley’s face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crowley shook his head and lay back down, facing Aziraphale. “No,” he said, “don’t do that. Don’t go feeling guilty. I’ve got you now, haven’t I?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aziraphale nodded. “You’ve got me now. Now and always.” He leaned over to kiss Crowley, and Crowley sank into it. The feeling of his angel’s lips against his own, where he’d wanted them to be for so long, was still delightfully fresh. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Aziraphale gave him a mischievous smile. “What’s say I show you what I’d have done that night, if I’d had the courage to invite you in?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crowley grinned. “It’s only, what? Eighty years overdue?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Something like that,” Aziraphale said, and lunged forward to suck at Crowley’s throat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Crowley leaned back and sighed contentedly as his angel bruised his skin with a love bite. There was more where that came from, he knew. Inside his stomach, something fluttered, and this time, Crowley had no need to try and drown it. </span>
</p><p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you liked this fic, please do leave some kudos or a comment! It's always appreciated! </p><p>Thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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